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What's your opinion on Esperanto (language)? (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/socialism@lemmy.ml
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Apparently the language was popular among early 20th century socialist movements because it was of an international character and therefore not associated with any nationality and its use by international socialist organisations wouldn't show favour to any particular country. It was banned in Nazi Germany and other fascist states because of its association with the left wing, with anti-nationalism, and because its creator was Jewish. It has mostly languished since then but still has around 2 million speakers with about 1,000 native speakers.

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[–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

The national language of one of my countries is spoken by 300'000 persons.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That's wonderful, but hardly relevant :) My point was: creating a language specifically for easing comms between people, and then have 2 million people speak that language out of 8 bln, while there are multiple other general use languages that are spoken by billions of ppl, just doesn't make sense. Case in point: we have this conversation in one of those, and it's neither your, nor my native tongue.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Case in point: we have this conversation in one of those, and it's neither your, nor my native tongue.

    And I'm pretty sure you have a college diploma. English as an international language works, but not for everybody, while Esperanto could, and when it works it reinforces the Empire, while Esperanto wouldn't.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Diploma or not, i feel if you want to learn one language to get around in the world, there are many better options than esperanto. English one of them but hey, spanish would work too, if you go to south america... I also think english by now is a common treasure for humanity, and not related to one country or empire. It evolved into a simple enough language so that you can very easily pick it up to a level where you can get around in most of the world. Anyhow, i wish all the best to all ppl learning esperanto, I'll keep on struggling with my Dutch, and then maybe spanish or turkish :)

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